Page "Democracy in America" Paragraph 3

Tocqueville begins his book by describing the change in social conditions taking place.

He observed that over the previous seven hundred years the social and economic conditions of men had become more equal.

The aristocracy, Tocqueville believed, was gradually disappearing as the modern world experienced the beneficial effects of equality.

Tocqueville traced the development of equality to a number of factors, such as granting all men permission to enter the clergy, widespread economic opportunity resulting from the growth of trade and commerce, the royal sale of titles of nobility as a monarchical fundraising tool, and the abolition of primogeniture.

Tocqueville described this revolution as a " providential fact " of an " irresistible revolution ," leading some to criticize the determinism found in the book.

However, based on Tocqueville's correspondences with friends and colleagues, Marvin Zetterbaum, Professor Emeritus at University of California Davis, concludes that the Frenchman never accepted democracy as determined or inevitable.

He did, however, consider equality more just and therefore found himself among its partisans.